So like the title suggests, I had an issue with a thief. Last week on Tuesday I came to work like any other day. I get to work a little before 9AM and deposit my purse behind my desk and sat down to respond to a few emails and regular desk duty stuff. Then at like 10 past 9 I go to finally get my coffee. I have been gone for about 2-3 total minutes and I come out and Melissa and Richard (co-workers) are standing at Rich's office talking books, and I thought I would call Melissa over to look at my relatively new purse since I hadn't thought she had seen it yet. So I sit down and look underneath my desk to get my purse and lo and behold it's not there. Curious. So then I look in the drawers and ask if anyone has seen my purse. Richard sometimes like to pull jokes to prove a point and I thought maybe cause I wasn't at my post that was what was going on and asked him if he tok my purse as a joke and he said no. Then he says, as he was coming into the office someone came flying out and nearly hit him in the face with the door she was moving so quickly. My heart sank; I knew exactly what had happened. Someone took off with my purse. Was it locked up..... no, was it in plain view....NO. You had to go looking for it in order to see it. I asked Richard what she looked like, he said tall as he was 5'9 or so, native, dark hair and in a dark jacket. Ok now I am PISSED! How dare someone take my stuff for no reason! It's not their property it is MINE! So I called security to see if they could security tapes for Richard to look at to see if he could ID the person walking away with it. They said they would look into it and get back to me. So I checked my bank balance online to see if there was any activity and there wasn't. I didn't think anyone would be able to take out funds with my bank card because they wouldn't have the PIN number to it. And there would be no way to take it out at a teller without Photo ID. So I hold off until I could get a lunch hour to get to the bank. I also had the boys’ bank card in my purse and I had to phone him to tell him to go to his bank and freeze his accounts. And cause he had the day off it was super easy for him to do. So I sit and stir and seethe for a good hour and a half over all of this anxiously waiting for Security to get back to me about this. No phone call at about 12pm so I called them and they say that they are looking through tapes still. Ok then fine. I check my bank balance again and there is a withdrawal of $900 and all I thought was damn my dad must have transfered the money out of his chequing account into his savings. My dad and I share that chequing account and have for about 10 years now. My paycheck gets deposited into that account and my car payment and my insurance come out of that account. I was more worried about the fact that he took the money but didn't leave the money I needed to pay my car insurance that was to come out on Friday. So I phoned him to ask him about it and he wasn't home all I got was his answering machine. So again I sit and stew. Then at about 2:30 city Place Security calls me and says they have had my purse turned in. I go down there and pick up my purse and notice that both bank cards (mine and the boys) and my SIN and my Photo ID/driver's license. All the pertinent info really. Again I call Security to see where it stands and the guy that was looking into it wasn't there. Ok fine, back to the stew. Call the credit companies and have my SIN number flagged for the next 6 years. Called my insurance company and let them know that maybe I won't make my payment. So I called the police non emergent line to repot the theft and I was asked if I had a suspect in mind, and I said I might I am just waiting on security tapes to confirm an ID and was told to call back and make the report then. Umm ok. So make me do the leg work and then report the easy part to you? Impressive. So by this time I have completely forgotten to go to the bank and it's now closed. Then finally at 4:30 my dad calls me back and I inform him he hasn't left me enough money to cover my cheque, to which he replies there is $900 in the account after he went shopping. I said no you transfered $900 out of our account into somewhere.......didn't you??? I said well I had my purse lifted this morning and shortly after $900 went missing and I thought it was you who took it now I see it was the bitch who stole my purse. Fuck me! So my dad and I hang up, he's calling the bank as am I now. I didn't think you could just freeze your account over the phone. I almost vomitted when I got through the queue to talk to a person. I explained what happened and they said that the transaction happened at 11:57am. There are almost tears now. I can feel them building. The tightness in my throat. And it's getting hard to breathe. The person on the phone is telling me to right away call the credit companies and has since frozen the account. They are also informing the branch that it happened at to get the ball rolling on an investigation. At this point I am unclear as to if this happened at a teller or an ATM. The person inthe call centre though assured me that the money would be returned. That made me think it was a teller. So I phoned my dad back apologizing over and over again. I should have been on the phone pronto to the bank to have the account frozen. I get done work and walk across the street to the Security desk to see if they found anything and the guy who was looking after the complaint had left for the day. I don't think he did what he was supposed to honestly. But the head security guy was there and he let me look at the tapes, but I couldn't really tell but based on the time line we had established there were two possibilities. So I phoned Richard to come over and look at these people and I told him to ask Melissa to come with him to look as well. They couldn't be conclusive about it. So I finally leave work at about 6om and on my way home I decided to pull into a cop shop and report the theft. Officer Waterman was very nice. He made the report and said they would be in touch with the bank and whatnot. I go home and phone my dad again and he's unbelievable calm and easy about it. That made me feel better about it. Even the boy was surprisingly supportive. I thought I would get a big lecture about hiding my purse at work and how I should have been on the horn to the bank as soon as it happened. But he just kept saying that the person in the wrong was the asshole who stole my purse. I thought he would be really pissed off at me for putting his card at risk but he wasn't. That was nice to hear from him. So I decided I needed to decompress from the stress, so I was going to volleyball that night to get out some frustration. I get there and everyone is late and we finally start and all of a sudden my ankle is feeling really weird and I am getting shooting pains when I try to push off of it to get a jump or dash for the ball. I ended up leaving early. That left me feeling very unsatisfied. So the next day I straighten around the ID and stuff and get my new one sent to me eventually. I had to be at work early to get to through a memorial parade for two fallen firefighters. It was a sobering day for me. Yeah I lost money but I was still alive. I got a call from the assistant manager at the bank where it happened. I talked to her and discovered that the money was in fact taken out through a face to face teller. How does that happen exactly? Well quite easily if you act casually and get a male teller. I have to come in and reopen new accounts with them so that they can put the money back into this new account. I have been on the phone with her for about 10 minutes and have yet to receive an apology that this happpened. Nothing. The bank in Kenora that my dad deals with has offered him money to tie him over until we get the money back intothe account. I got bupkis. Bastards! I go home and there's a message on my machine that a police shop has my ID. Interesting! So I go to the cop shop and ask when it was turned in and where it was found. The guy couldn't answer either question. That's sort of annoying, getting a little perturbed with the boys in blue now. Next day I get to my afternoon appointment and they are nice and smiley and still no real apology, I kept waiting for the barrage of "I'm so sorry"'s but it never came. And as I am there it slips that the teller said that the persono acted very naturally as he (aha the teller is male) was asking security questions. Ok answering questions is great but how about we ask the right ones. Like if perhaps the id had been stolen ask more then someone's address and SIN number, how about asking who I share the account with? Or I have 2 bills that are automatically withdrawn from this account what are they and how much are the bills? Those were two of the questions I had to answer when I was setting up my banking online! Good questions that wouldn't have an answer in my purse. Fuckin' knobs! I'm very upset now that I know this. So I get my new accounts open and as kind as they are they offer me my cheques fee free. Isn't that sweet? I asked how far they were into the ivestigation and they said they were still going through security tapes. Where have I heard that before....? They couldn't let me see the tapes though. I have a feeling that when they get through this investigation I will no longer be a Bank of
J-BOMB OUT and extremely angry!
